732: 24 Years of Side Hustle Advice

Summary

The Side Hustle Show — Episode 732 Summary

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24 Years of Side Hustle Advice

Host: Nick Loper
Date: April 6, 2026
Theme: Drawing on 24 years of entrepreneurship, Nick Loper delivers a rapid-fire masterclass in practical, mindset-changing, and deeply actionable side hustle lessons. This episode distills two decades of hard-won wisdom from both Nick and his most memorable guests.

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Main Theme & Purpose

Over 41 minutes (ads excluded), Nick Loper surveys the most impactful guidance gleaned from his own journey and from hundreds of Side Hustle Nation guests. The focus: practical strategies, tested frameworks, recurring entrepreneurial pitfalls, and the psychology behind resilient, profitable side hustling—so listeners can move from idea to money-making action.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Motivation: Digging Deep for Your “Why”

• Dig relentlessly into your motivations. Don’t stop at “I want extra money.” Keep asking—“Why?”—until you hit the core value (autonomy, security, family). (01:19–02:09)

  "You got to understand that inspiration is temporary. So do everything you can to build some positive momentum as quickly as you can before that inspiration expires." — Nick Loper (02:14)

• Take meaningful action fast. Secure momentum before initial excitement fades (register a domain, make your first offer). (02:26–02:51)
• Missing out is fine. Business ideas are like buses; another will come. (02:56–03:09)

Where Side Hustle Ideas Come From

• Pursue obsession or curiosity, not just passion. It’s hard to outcompete the truly obsessed. “What do you never get tired of talking about?” (03:10–04:18)

  "If you don't have something you're undyingly passionate about...maybe you can follow your curiosity." — Nick Loper (04:08)

• Experimentation is essential. Not every experiment works—Nick’s AI-generated episode was a flop, but following curiosity matters. (04:26–04:51)
• Solve real problems; money follows. All businesses are “repeatable systems for solving problems.” (05:55)
• Painkillers over vitamins. Sell solutions to urgent pain rather than nice-to-haves. Two online motivations: solve a problem, or be entertained. (06:49–07:20)

  "It's quite a bit easier to sell pain pills than it is to sell a vitamin." — Nick Loper (06:49)

Navigating Competition & Opportunity

• If you can’t be first, be different. If you can’t be different, be better. (07:41–08:45)

  "If you can't be first, be different. If you can't be different, be better." (08:45)

• Chase “antelopes,” not “mice.” Effort is similar; aim for high-upside ideas. (08:51–09:21)
• Ask: If this works, is it worth it? Assess the asymmetric upside and your role models. (09:23–10:09)

Mindsets for Side Hustle Success

• Ditch 'I don’t have time.' Reframe as “I prioritized something else.” Use the bookends of your day to work proactively for your future. (10:49–11:35)

  "We vote our time with our priorities and we're all dealt the same number of hours in the week." — Nick Loper (11:04)

• Bullets before cannonballs. Low-stakes experiments before full commitment. (14:22–15:23)

Learning, Growth, and Resilience

• “Just in time” learning. Learn what you need for the next step, not everything at once. (15:25–16:26)
• Reps, reps, reps. Everyone starts out “cringe”; improvement is inevitable. (16:28–16:49)

  "You've got to get started before you can get good." — Nick Loper (16:28)

• Treat failure as training. (17:00–17:23)
• Perfection is the enemy. Launch early and iterate; “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version, you launched too late.” (17:51–18:12)

Marketing & Scaling

• Go where the money is already flowing. Use “buy buttons” and platforms with existing customer traffic. (18:30–18:53)
• Strategic partnerships = lead fountains. Who are your customers already trusting? Find ways to get in front of them. (18:49–20:23)
• Fill demand, don’t create it from scratch. Target problems people are actively searching for. (21:00–21:46)
• Master one channel first. Simplicity before diversification—go deep before going wide. (22:13–23:23)

  "It is better to be excellent at one platform...than it is to be mediocre at ten different platforms." — Nick Loper, citing Brian Feroldi (23:07)

Ownership, Delegation, and Optimization

• Ultimately, it’s on you. No one else will move your dreams forward. (23:41–24:09)
• Work on your business, not just in it. Build processes, delegate, and aim to be the owner, not the doer. (24:21–25:41)
• Sell the transformation, not just the product. Make the customer the hero—what does your offer help them become? (25:41–26:22)
• Understand your numbers: LTV vs CAC. Know your customers’ lifetime value and what you can afford to acquire them. (26:56–28:15)
• Mentorship is the true shortcut. Learn from others’ paths whenever possible—buy the course, hire the coach, ask for help. (28:16–29:21)

Execution, Progress, and Letting Go

• Opportunities appear in motion. Action breeds more action and chance encounters. (32:02–33:42)

  "Opportunities become visible once you’re in motion." — Nick Loper (32:12)

• Control the controllables. Sometimes things go sideways (like Google shutting down Nick’s ad account on day one); focus on what you can change. (34:18–35:26)
• Sharpen your pencil: Constantly optimize for small improvements. (35:54–37:07)
• Take some profit. Reinvest for ROI, but it’s OK to take chips off the table and diversify income streams. (37:27–38:36)
• Quit or pivot if you dread your work. Don’t let a failed side hustle become a burden; “business ideas are like buses.” (38:36–39:32)

  "Winners quit all the time, right? If something is not serving you, it's totally okay to quit that or even put it on pause." — Nick Loper (39:09)

Daily Habits and the Long View

• Track your progress; celebrate wins. Reflect each night: What did you get done? What are you grateful for? What’s tomorrow’s top priority? (39:43–40:42)

  "You win tomorrow, today." — John Lee Dumas (40:42)

• Enjoy the journey. Progress, purpose, and relationships are keys to entrepreneurial happiness. (41:10–end)

  "The journey really is the destination...take a moment to look around and appreciate that this is pretty cool that we get to do this kind of work." — Nick Loper (41:12)

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Notable Quotes

• On action & momentum:

  "Momentum breeds momentum and momentum breeds results." — Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host (02:40)

• On failure:

  "For weightlifters, for bodybuilders, failure is 100% normal. It is a daily occurrence." — Nick Loper (16:57)

• On time:

  "We vote our time with our priorities and we're all dealt the same number of hours in the week." — Nick Loper (11:04)

• On launching:

  "If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you launched too late." — Nick Loper, citing Reid Hoffman (18:10)

• On mastery:

  "I'm embarrassed by the work I did a year ago and a year from now I hope to be embarrassed by the work that I did today." — Joe Salsihai, as cited by Nick Loper (41:12)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Digging for Your Why: 01:12–02:14
• Business Ideas: Passion, Obsession, and Curiosity: 03:09–04:18
• Money Comes from Solving Problems: 05:55–06:20
• Painkillers vs. Vitamins: 06:49–07:20
• If You Can't Be First, Be Different: 07:41–08:45
• Chasing Antelopes vs. Mice: 08:51–09:21
• Mindset Shift: Time and Priorities: 10:49–11:35
• Bullets Before Cannonballs: 14:22–15:23
• “Just In Time” Learning and Reps: 15:25–16:49
• Perfection & Embarrassment: 17:51–18:12
• Buy Buttons & Strategic Partnerships: 18:30–20:23
• Filling Demand vs. Creating Demand: 21:00–21:46
• Platform Focus (Be Excellent at One): 22:13–23:23
• Delegation and Working 'On' the Business: 24:21–25:41
• Sell Transformation: 25:41–26:22
• LTV vs CAC: 26:56–28:15
• Mentorship as the Ultimate Shortcut: 28:16–29:21
• Opportunities Appear in Motion: 32:02–33:42
• Control the Controllables: 34:18–35:26
• Sharpen Your Pencil (Constant Improvement): 35:54–37:07
• On Quitting Side Hustles: 38:36–39:32
• Celebrating Wins & Planning Tomorrow: 39:43–40:42
• The Joy in the Journey: 41:10–end

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Memorable Moments

• Nick’s AI-generated podcast episode flop—embracing experimental failure. (04:26–04:51)
• The "weather in Turkey" metaphor for controlling what you can and keeping perspective. (34:18–34:31)
• The analogy of selling not the mushroom in Mario, but the transformation it provides. (26:22)

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Tone & Language

Nick Loper’s characteristic mix of encouragement, humility, practical realism, and dry humor comes through clearly—especially in lines like:

"Business ideas are like buses. There’s always another one coming along."
and
"Nobody else is going to do it for you."

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Final Thoughts

This episode is a treasure trove for anyone wishing to side hustle smarter. It’s an honest, actionable, and inspiring review of what works and what to watch for, from a leader with the long-view who isn’t afraid to talk failure, fear, and the unglamorous daily grind—as much as he celebrates entrepreneurial wins.

Share this episode with a would-be or current side hustler—it's the “ultimate highlight reel” of Side Hustle Nation’s best advice.

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Transcript

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

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[Nick Loper]

24 years of side hustle advice in 41ish minutes.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

Starting with your driving motivation. A lot of people approach side hustles

[Nick Loper]

from the standpoint of, well, I want

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

to make extra money, but what you

[Nick Loper]

need to do is kind of put yourself in the shoes of that annoyingly curious five year old and ask why?

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

And then ask why again. Well, why do you want to make extra money?

[Nick Loper]

Well, I need a little extra breathing room in my budget, you know, that would make life a little more comfortable. Well, why?

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

What do you want to do? Well, I want to pay off some debt. I want to maybe go on this family trip.

[Nick Loper]

Well, why?

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

You know?

[Nick Loper]

Well, maybe eventually I want to be able to quit my job and be in more control of my calendar. Well, why? Well, I really value having autonomy over my time. And you start to drill down and you get more and more honest with yourself on why it's important to you. What do you really want and value? Because this is going to keep you

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

going when times get tough in your

[Nick Loper]

side hustle, it's like, you see, it's hard. If it were easy, everybody would be doing it. And I think it's really important to

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

know that driving motivation. Otherwise it's too easy to throw in the towel.

[Nick Loper]

And when you find a side hustle idea that strikes your fancy that is really inspiring, you got to understand that inspiration is temporary. So do everything you can to build some positive momentum as quickly as you

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

can before that inspiration expires. Maybe that's registering that domain name. Maybe that is making an offer.

[Nick Loper]

Maybe that is putting a product up for sale, whatever. It is like taking important action.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

Because I think you'll find momentum breeds momentum and momentum breeds results.

[Nick Loper]

And results kind of is a virtuous

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

cycle in that way. And so just recognize inspiration has.

[Nick Loper]

Or inspiration has an expiration date.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

And if you can take action before then, I think you're going to be quite a bit better off.

[Nick Loper]

And if you don't take action in time, also recognize. Look, business ideas are like buses.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

This is the Richard Branson line.

[Nick Loper]

There's always another one coming along, so

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

don't stress if you missed. Missed the boat on one, because there's always something else coming along.

[Nick Loper]

When it comes to coming up with

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

business ideas in the first place, you got to ask yourself, well, what are you obsessed with?

[Nick Loper]

And the reason I bring this up

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

is it's hard to compete with somebody who's obsessed.

[Nick Loper]

And I'll give the example of, you

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

know, credit card points and miles.

[Nick Loper]

Like, I like playing this game. I like signing up for new credit card bonuses. Traveling for free is a fun little life hack. But if I were to compete in this space as a content creator, I'm

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

never going to compete with the points guy, with all the hacks, the people

[Nick Loper]

who really live and breathe this stuff

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

day in and day out.

[Nick Loper]

Now, where I can compete, what I

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

have been obsessed with for the last decade plus is side hustle ideas. Right?

[Nick Loper]

This was the same. It's kind of the same questions that

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

I asked early on. Well, what do you never get tired of talking about?

[Nick Loper]

Well, I really love deconstructing these business ideas and finding and sharing creative ways to make extra money. Like, that really lights me up. I mean, it still does today, the

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

way it did 12, 13 years ago.

[Nick Loper]

There's a lot of advice around following

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

your passion, but I would argue if

[Nick Loper]

you don't have something you're undyingly passionate about and going back to the obsession thing, maybe you can follow your curiosity, because this is kind of what drives

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

a lot of the content. In my case as well.

[Nick Loper]

I'm curious what would happen if we tested this or what would happen if we did this experiment. Like one example, just recently, I published

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

an episode that was generated by AI

[Nick Loper]

and it was universally panned.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

The audience didn't love it.

[Nick Loper]

I thought it was super cool. I was excited by it. I found these side hustle case studies and stories, fed it into NotebookLM. It came back with this cool 17 minute back and forth. It was an experiment. The crowd has spoken.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

It wasn't a winner, so back to the drawing board on that.

[Nick Loper]

But it was something I was curious

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

to play around with.

[Nick Loper]

And so if you can follow your curiosity and kind of be testing different things.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

I read at one point that Amazon

[Nick Loper]

is testing at any given point like

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

a thousand different variables on their website, trying to eke out another 0.01% conversion

[Nick Loper]

rate or something because at their scale and volume that would be a significant

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

bump to the bottom line, every little micro percentage.

[Nick Loper]

I don't think you need to go to that extreme, but you can kind of run these little experiments, these tests

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

in your day to day life.

[Nick Loper]

Well, what would happen if I did this? And it kind of gives yourself permission to take a swing and say like, oh, if it doesn't work, it was just an experiment. And similarly like I had to shut down my Facebook content monetization experiment last month just because it was like, well, for the time that I'm putting into this, the results aren't what I would

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

be hoping to get out.

[Nick Loper]

It's like, okay, hey, you gave it an honest try.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

You gave it the experiment. It didn't work. It was, you know, following that curiosity. If I ever come around with coming up with a kid's book, it would be mommy, where do business ideas come from?

[Nick Loper]

And the truth is that business ideas

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

or money comes from solving problems, right?

[Nick Loper]

A business is just a repeatable system

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

for solving a problem. So if you can put yourself in that mindset, like early on I probably

[Nick Loper]

googled like a lot of us have,

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

you know, ways to make money online

[Nick Loper]

and what a lot of these listicles

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

that you'll find and I've written some

[Nick Loper]

of them myself, they kind of dance around the issue of, well, the real

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

money comes from solving problems.

[Nick Loper]

And I kind of stumbled into that

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

with my first side Hustle or my first online side Hustle was this comparison shopping site for shoes.

[Nick Loper]

Where it was, it started for the, the noble purpose of well, how do I make money online? But the, the end result was it was a helpful tool. It was a helpful website to help

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

people find the best price on their

[Nick Loper]

next pair of shoes. And that's why it worked.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

So money comes from solving problems. Another thing we talk about quite a bit on the show is the idea of pain pills versus vitamins.

[Nick Loper]

And I think it is quite a bit easier to sell pain pills than

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

it is to sell a vitamin. Because if you think you've got this

[Nick Loper]

splitting headache, you're going for the Excedrin, you're going for the Tylenol right away. Versus, hey, if I forget to take

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

my vitamin today, it's probably not the end of the world. Like, what's that expensive problem? What's that driving pain that you can take away from customers and solve that kind of problem? Early on, a friend of mine gave me this line. He called it the rule of the Internet.

[Nick Loper]

He said people are only ever online

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

for one of two reasons.

[Nick Loper]

Number one, to solve a problem, boom. I think that's easier to play in.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

And number two, to be entertained. And if you are very entertaining, you can still play in that space. But you're competing against Mr. Beast and ESPN and HBO and like,

[Nick Loper]

all of this stuff.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

Versus if you can solve a very specific problem for a very specific customer, I think it would be much easier to find an audience and start making money that way. One thing that comes up a lot

[Nick Loper]

is the idea of competition.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

Well, somebody else is already doing my idea.

[Nick Loper]

Somebody else already came up with this. Somebody did it first.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

And so Jonathan Mentaunsa from Choose Fi gave me this line on the show.

[Nick Loper]

He said, if you can't be first, be different. In his case, he was talking about the financial independence movement, early retirement.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

He's like, look, there were already dozens

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

of blogs talking about this, but there

[Nick Loper]

were very few podcasts.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

And so Choose Fi kind of filled that podcast void for that early retirement community.

[Nick Loper]

And I'll add the corollary to that. If you can't be different, be better, right?

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

This is how the Internet overall improves in quality, hopefully over time.

[Nick Loper]

Because, well, somebody else had the same

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

idea, but I can do it better. I can kind of leapfrog what's already been created.

[Nick Loper]

And you see this in physical products

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

all the time, where it's like, oh, this already exists.

[Nick Loper]

Shoot. But here are some little tweaks, little improvements, little iterations that we can make

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

to that to improve it over time. And I've done the same thing with website articles. Oh, shoot.

[Nick Loper]

Somebody already. Somebody already wrote this idea, you know, back to the drawing board. It's like, oh, wait, I can still

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

add my own unique approach to this.

[Nick Loper]

I can be different.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

I can hopefully be better. So if you can't be first, be different. If you can't be different, be better.

[Nick Loper]

There's this proverb that talks about when it comes to chasing business ideas about this lion on the African savannah and says, well, it could either spend its time chasing antelopes or chasing Mice, it's going to take the same amount of effort either way. One is going to feed him for

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

a week, the other he's going to still be hungry afterwards.

[Nick Loper]

And so I wanted you to think about this.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

When you're evaluating different opportunities, these different

[Nick Loper]

business ideas, like, are you going after the antelope idea or are you going

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

after the mouse idea?

[Nick Loper]

Like, even if you work, if you succeed, if you catch the thing, is

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

that really going to be worth your time?

[Nick Loper]

So the question is, you know, what if this works? We spent a lot of time talking about we how to minimize failure, you know, minimize risk. And I think all of that is important. But you also have to ask yourself, well, what if it works? And if it does, would that be

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

a win for you?

[Nick Loper]

And the way to do that is

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

to look at somebody who's done it

[Nick Loper]

before you, who's, you know, three or

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

five years ahead of you, and say, well, what does their life look like day to day?

[Nick Loper]

Are they still putting in 80 hour work weeks or do they have a little more freedom and flexibility? Is there income where you would want it to be?

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

And kind of evaluate different side hustle options based on what if it works?

[Nick Loper]

What if the thing takes off and

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

is that going to be a win

[Nick Loper]

for me, the idea here is to

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

make an asymmetric bet or several asymmetric bets, because the first thing that you

[Nick Loper]

try may not work and that's okay.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

But if I minimize my downside risk and swing for the big enough antelope or the big enough upside, then that's

[Nick Loper]

going to erase all my losses and

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

I'm still going to win. So look at, look at those side hustles or those business ideas in terms of what has an asymmetric upside.

[Nick Loper]

And I think that's, you know, the side hustle mentality in general. There's this connotation of some entrepreneurial upside that separates it from, you know, taking

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

a second job, bartending on the weekends, delivering pizzas, you know, driving for doordash, stuff like that.

[Nick Loper]

Where, okay, there is a, there's a

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

path here where I can go beyond hours for dollars if I do this right. One phrase that I have tried to remove from my vocabulary is I don't have time or I didn't have time.

[Nick Loper]

And what I've been trying to replace that with is the more brutally honest

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

I prioritized something else because we vote our time with our priorities and we're all dealt the same number of hours in the week. And your week might look different from

[Nick Loper]

mine, but there is some level of

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

truth to that, where you have to look in the mirror and say what did I prioritize? Did I prioritize watching Netflix? Did I prioritize doom scrolling social media? Did I prioritize spending time with my kids?

[Nick Loper]

Nobody's going to fault you for that,

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

but you need to be honest with you and stop saying I don't have time.

[Nick Loper]

The time is there, but you got

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

to figure out the priorities. And maybe the helpful framework that I've

[Nick Loper]

heard is kind of think of the

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

bookends of your days, first thing in the morning, last thing before bed, and

[Nick Loper]

try and carve out some level of consistency. Maybe it's 15 minutes, maybe it's half

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

an hour, but doing it and being dedicated and deliberate about it and try to move the ball forward on your own agenda, on your own proactive stuff before reacting to other people's problems and putting out fires and dealing with the rest of life's responsibilities. The time is there and if you dedicate to it, if you really make it a priority, more hard won side Hustle advice coming up right after this

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[Nick Loper]

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[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

Okay, let's say you've got your side hustle idea now and it comes to kind of this validation stage or testing phase. And I want to share this phrase, bullets before cannonballs, which comes from the book Good to Great by Jim Collins.

[Nick Loper]

And he talks about these companies when they have a new initiative, they have a new idea, they want to test

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

it on a really low risk calibration stage. This is the firing bullets, like low cost. Okay. You can buy a, you know, box, you don't buy the dozen, right?

[Nick Loper]

And I'm going to kind of calibrate, Calibrate.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

Okay, Boom. We hit.

[Nick Loper]

Now that we're lined up, that's when

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

we're going all in. That's when we're going to fire the cannonball. In my case, this was, you know, direct link text ads on Google, you know, Google Ads for a budget of a dollar a day. Starting out, those were my bullets before I felt comfortable investing in having this whole shoe shopping website built out. That was the Cannonball. So what is it in your side hustle in your business idea where you can kind of find the low cost validation before going all in?

[Nick Loper]

For a lot of people there's this hesitation to get going.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

Well, I don't know enough.

[Nick Loper]

They have this imposter syndrome and it never really goes away. The only cure for imposter syndrome is doing the work. So I want to propose this idea

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

of just in time learning.

[Nick Loper]

This is not knowing everything that you could possibly ever need to know about

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

the thing, but knowing just enough to take step one and figuring out step two through 10 as you go. In fact, there's a whole book on the, on the shelf behind me from

[Nick Loper]

Pat Flynn called Lean Learning, which talks

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

about this exact idea I don't.

[Nick Loper]

You almost don't want to know what

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

you don't know, and you just want to know just enough to do the thing and then when the next you know, you're going to bump up against the ceiling of your ability or the bump up against the, you know, next problem and hurdle. Okay, I'll figure it out then.

[Nick Loper]

And have the confidence to that you

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

are able to figure it out. This is probably the most important skill for entrepreneurs, is the skill of learning new skills because it never really goes away. So this idea of practicing just in time, learning has been really helpful for me.

[Nick Loper]

The other important thing is that you've

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

got to get started before you can get good. In Arnold Schwarzenegger's book, he talks about this idea of reps, reps, reps. And

[Nick Loper]

that one really hit home for me

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

because I feel the same way with the Side Hustle show. Whereas, you know, 50 episodes before, I've felt more comfortable behind the mic. It was reps, reps, reps putting in

[Nick Loper]

the work, being maybe a little bit

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

cringe, and trying to improve your craft.

[Nick Loper]

The other thing that stood out to

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

me in that book was, you know,

[Nick Loper]

for weightlifters, for bodybuilders, failure is 100% normal.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

It is a daily occurrence.

[Nick Loper]

We have to train to, to the

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

point of failure to build the muscle that we want. And that one hit home for me because it's like we kind of shy away from failure. But in certain fields, like, no, that's

[Nick Loper]

just a part of the game.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

It's like a ticket to entry in a way. And looking at failure not as a, you know, I'm an abject failure. It's just, well, that little thing failed. And I know I'm going to be

[Nick Loper]

stronger because of it because I'm going

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

to take the lessons into the next thing. When my brother and I were kids and we'd be helping dad out with projects around the house, he would give us permission to help out and hammer in nails here and there.

[Nick Loper]

And he had this line, it's not a piano.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

And what he meant by that was, it doesn't have to be perfectly aligned. If you bend a nail, if you give him a little dent in the wood, it's not the end of the world.

[Nick Loper]

And that stood out to me. It's not to say he didn't care about quality.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

He cared about doing a good job for sure.

[Nick Loper]

But it was the idea that perfection

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

is the enemy of good enough.

[Nick Loper]

And I think back to that first

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

shoe site and the idea of the

[Nick Loper]

first version of the site.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

I'll see if I can bring it up on the Wayback machine.

[Nick Loper]

Not the greatest looking thing, right? It's kind of like, well, I'm a little bit embarrassed to show people when they ask about my side project. And it brings back this Reid Hoffman

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

line of, well, if you're not embarrassed

[Nick Loper]

by the first version of your product,

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

you launched too late. So keep that in mind. Perfection is the enemy of good enough. You can kind of improve as you go and you'll learn as you go. When it comes to marketing your product, one of the most common themes on the show is to go where the cash is already flowing. We've called this the buy buttons theory. What?

[Nick Loper]

Where are the platforms where you can

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

put your buy button and make it easy for customers to do business with you? Comes for services, comes for products. And in terms of services, we've seen people kind of shortcut the marketing channels

[Nick Loper]

by going direct to these kind of

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

strategic referral parts partners. So the marketing question you have to

[Nick Loper]

ask is, who are my target customers

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

already doing business with? I think this was first introduced to me by Daniel DiPiazza Years and years ago where he had this tutoring business and he's working for this tutoring company

[Nick Loper]

making 18 bucks an hour.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

Meanwhile, they're charging the customers like 100 bucks an hour. So he's like, well, what if I put on this group class about SAT prep or something? So he goes to these guidance counselors and hands out flyers and markets this class and fills up the se, you know, 30 seats or something at his same. I forget what his rate was, but

[Nick Loper]

it exploded his hourly rate from $18

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

an hour to $1,000 an hour for that, you know, three hour session or whatever. He was doing this test prep thing by kind of going direct to the source. So think of the lead fountains. Who are the steady stream of people my customers are already doing business with.

[Nick Loper]

How can I get in front of

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

them in a helpful or complimentary way where it's like, we're not competitors, but we could, we could help each other out. Another example was Carter Osborne. He had a college essay admissions consulting business.

[Nick Loper]

And his strategic partner, the one that kind of took off the business was,

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

you know, somebody who was a broader college admissions consultant person who just didn't

[Nick Loper]

like doing the essay work. So he became kind of almost a

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

white label partner underneath, underneath her business. So that was really cool. My wife has done this in her photography business where it's just, you know, the wedding venues were their brides, the brides being their target customers. But the wedding venues are kind of the strategic referral partners here.

[Nick Loper]

Well, what does it take to get on your preferred vendors list?

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

Well, we need to see your portfolio and, you know, proof of insurance in some cases. It was really that simple. So again, think of those buy buttons where, how can you get in front of your target customers? In the case of the side Hustle show, it was guesting on a lot of personal finance related podcasts where the common themes were saving and budgeting and frugal living. And I was fun for me to come on and be like, well, let's talk about the revenue side of the equation. You know, how can you increase the income?

[Nick Loper]

How can you, what are the creative

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

ways you can do to make extra money? And that really resonated with that audience and helped me grow, grow the show.

[Nick Loper]

Similarly, we talk a lot about filling

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

demand versus creating demand.

[Nick Loper]

This is kind of the online business

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

equivalent of skating where the puck is going versus trying to you create demand from scratch. And so this is practicing good search engine optimization.

[Nick Loper]

This is kind of figure, well, what

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

are people looking for that I can help out with versus trying to like,

[Nick Loper]

well, I came up with this cool idea for this brand new thing that nobody knows exists.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

And I don't know, I mean, it's

[Nick Loper]

really, it's cool if you can do that.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

That's kind of the Steve Jobs and the Henry Fords of the world. But for side hustles, or side hustles in particular, probably easier to try and get in front of some demand that already exists. And that's why you hear so many guests reference, oh, I use this keyword research tool to find, oh, it had

[Nick Loper]

this search volume, it had this level of competitiveness.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

That's what I was going to go create my product about, or that's what I was going to create my content about, my video, my article about to fill that existing demand versus, you know, what I did for years and years in the early days of the site was like, I want to write, I'm

[Nick Loper]

going to write the article that I want to write, paying zero attention to

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

SEO and getting close to zero traffic as a result. So don't do what I did and try and get in front of that demand in a, in a more strategic way.

[Nick Loper]

As you're building your business, there's this tendency to all of a sudden see

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

all the different potential directions you could go. The shiny objects that are out. And from my seat as the host of the Side Hustle show, it's especially dangerous because that to me is the mark of A good episode when I hang up the call being like, well, dang, how come I don't have a billboard on the side of the highway? Or why don't I have a vending machine route? Or I could probably, you know, start that business. If I'm saying that I know it's going to be a hit, but it can be dangerous too. And so the advice for side hustlers is this idea of simplicity first, diversification second. Find one, offer one marketing channel, one target customer that's working before you go out and expand into channel number two, offer number two, et cetera. We had the advice from Brian Feroldi recently. It is better to be excellent at one platform, and in his case he started with Twitter or X, than it is to be mediocre at 10 different platforms. There's a lot of pressure to, you know, quote, unquote, be everywhere and cast a wide net. And with AI and content repurposing, like, you can do it, but I don't know if you can do it well. And so his advice was like, look,

[Nick Loper]

master the first thing, get it working,

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

get it spinning in your favor and then go do that for a second platform, do that for a third platform. One thing that it took me a while to realize was, look, nobody else is going to do it for you. I would have items that would sit on my to do list, you know, soon after, you know, quitting my job and becoming a, you know, full time

[Nick Loper]

entrepreneur, it would sit on my to do list and, and it would be

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

there week after week after week. And eventually it kind of hit me

[Nick Loper]

like, dude, it's on you to move this thing forward.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

Nobody else is going to do it for you. And that is both the appeal of entrepreneurship.

[Nick Loper]

I want to call my own shots, I want to be my own boss,

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

but also the realization of, now I got to call my own shots. Nobody else is going to come up with my priority list and I got to do it.

[Nick Loper]

If I want to make progress, it's

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

going to be on me. And for some people, that that can be a real challenge. I was at this conference early on, and this was for the shoe business, where the speaker gets up and he starts talking about outsourcing and delegation.

[Nick Loper]

And the punchline is really to work

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

on your business instead of in it.

[Nick Loper]

So, yes, nobody else is going to do it for you, but there's also

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

probably stuff that you don't need to be doing yourself. And so if you can build the recipe, if you can build the repeatable process, somebody else could take that off your plate. And I'm super grateful for the side Hustle nation team members at this point.

[Nick Loper]

In fact, this spun off a whole

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

separate business of mine. It's called virtual assistant assistant that ran for 9ish years, like 2011 to 2020. And it was the idea, well, I needed help in the shoe business, and I had some curiosity and questions around, well, how do I hire somebody?

[Nick Loper]

I don't really want somebody coming over and working at my kitchen table. I've heard of these remote outsourced companies,

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

but are they legit? Are they going to steal my ideas?

[Nick Loper]

I had every question in the book, how does it work in terms of tax?

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

So created this directory that was, you know, kind of a fun ride to be on the up and, you know, on the growth curve of the outsourcing industry.

[Nick Loper]

But the main idea is, if you

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

find yourself working in the weeds day after day, kind of in maintenance mode in the business, it's like trying to elevate yourself, trying to, like, take a moment to sharpen the saw instead of chopping down trees to work on the business rather than just in it to be the business owner and not just the business doer.

[Nick Loper]

And when it comes to selling your

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

product or service, don't sell the product or service. You got to sell the transformation. That's what customers are really buying.

[Nick Loper]

How is it going to make them feel? How is it going to make them

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

be a different person after the end of consuming your product or service?

[Nick Loper]

Like, how is it going to remove

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

their pain or improve their life in some way? This comes from my friend Jacques Hopkins from piano.

[Nick Loper]

In 21 days, he's like, the product

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

is this piano course.

[Nick Loper]

Learn how to play piano.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

But the transformation is, oh, in three weeks, you're telling me I can learn how to play my favorite songs on the piano and impress my friends at parties.

[Nick Loper]

And that sounds really cool. And because of that, he's able to command like 500 to $1,000 for this piano course.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

It's really, really cool idea of selling the transformation and not the product. Maybe you've seen the example of, like, the old school Mario video game where the product is the mushroom, but the transformation is, oh, now all of a sudden, I can jump higher, I'm twice as tall, I can break through bricks, right? It's like, what is the transformation that your product really offering? Another marketing lesson that I want to share is that businesses often live in this difference, this spread between lifetime value and the cost to acquire a customer. LTV versus cac. And as you spend more and More

[Nick Loper]

time in your business, you're going to

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

get a better sense of, well, what is the lifetime value of my customer? Is this a one off purchase? Is this a recurring service that they're going to buy month after month after month? In which case we had a pooper

[Nick Loper]

scooper business on the, on the show recently where he said his lifetime value of a customer could be as high

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

as $3,000 because it's a very sticky service. Like as long as that dog is

[Nick Loper]

doing his business in the backyard and they get used to paying for your

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

service, they're going to keep coming back week after week after week. And so if he could acquire customers

[Nick Loper]

for way less than $3,000, kind of

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

the spread is where your profit lies. And you can kind of, if I

[Nick Loper]

can acquire a $3,000 customer for 100

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

bucks, I'm going to make that trade all day long through meta ads, through Google Ads, through referral relationship, whatever channel that you want to do. We've seen it in E Comm as well, where it's like, okay, my product sells for $35. People on average buy a new thing every six months. And so the LTV is a hundred bucks. So we go out and acquire customers for 20. We'll make that trade all day long. So this is kind of a call to get a better understanding of your

[Nick Loper]

unit economics and the numbers kind of

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

that drive your business in terms of

[Nick Loper]

what is, what's a customer really worth,

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

not just in terms of revenue, but in terms of profit margin on that as well.

[Nick Loper]

The next idea that I want to

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

present is if there is a shortcut, it's mentorship. This is tapping into the knowledge of somebody else who has walked the path ahead of you. Because you can absolutely learn everything that you need to do on your own

[Nick Loper]

through trial and error, through consuming content, through figuring it out.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

Right.

[Nick Loper]

I think that's a really important skill.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

If there's a shortcut, it's mentorship. And we've seen this from so many guests where, oh, I invested in this person's course or I bought into their program and I accelerated my learning curve. That's what it is. It's an accelerated way to figure something out and get it done. And I was hesitant to do this for a long time. Being a very frugal person. It's like, I don't know, I could

[Nick Loper]

probably figure it out.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

And it's like, okay, once I realized,

[Nick Loper]

like, like, no, you could save months

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

off of your timeline by just following somebody else's recipe and tapping into their expertise. It's a much more a much faster way to go if you have the means to get that done that way.

[Nick Loper]

And sometimes mentorship can even come for free. We had a guest on recently who

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

cold LinkedIn message, the CEO founder of Petsmart.

[Nick Loper]

He had a pet product business and a couple weeks later he gets this

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

call out of the blue from a

[Nick Loper]

phone number he doesn't recognize.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

Like hey, this is Jim from petsmart. I got your note and it was like wow, some people really are willing to give back in that way. So I thought that was really cool.

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[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

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[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

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[Nick Loper]

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[Nick Loper]

So I google up the part number, I find this random store that is

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

selling it and then to my absolute delight, I see that they're running on Shopify. How could I tell that little purple

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

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It meant not having to create yet another new account. It meant not having to find my wallet. I am paid and checked out in just a couple clicks. You already know that our sponsor Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, including that car parts website and dozens of side hustle show guests. And you probably already know about the built in store templates and marketing tools that make it easy to get your store online and get found. But what you might not know is that Shopify can also help manage your inventory, ship products internationally and even handle customer returns.

[Nick Loper]

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[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

One line that was given to me early on in the show, probably in its second year, was this idea that opportunities become visible once you're in motion.

[Nick Loper]

And at the time I kind of dismissed it as, yeah, it's a little hippie woo woo kind of stuff. But I've seen it come true over

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

and over and over again. It's this idea that that action breeds action and action breeds conversations. You improve your network. And that idea, that conversation with somebody

[Nick Loper]

else sparks this next idea.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

Going back to the virtual assistant business,

[Nick Loper]

I was working on a completely unrelated

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

side project in the wine space, which I had no business being in. I don't know anything about wine, don't

[Nick Loper]

really drink wine, don't really care anything about wine. But it was for whatever reason, that's

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

what I was trying to build this wine or I came across this wine club review site and I looked up some of their affiliate programs and it's

[Nick Loper]

like, oh, this site is probably making pretty money. It was ranking, making good money.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

It ranked well for, you know, such and such wine club keyword plus review or plus reviews. I was like, oh, that's really interesting. What could I pivot that to, right? We talked about rip, pivot and jam, rip.

[Nick Loper]

Taking somebody else's business idea, pivoting to

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

your own niche, your own expertise, like whatever you're curious or obsessed about. And then Jamie, go and do the work, right? Do the hustle. And in my case, it was like

[Nick Loper]

using the exact same, you know, WordPress

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

theme as the wine club review site to build out the first version of the virtual assistant review site. And it was a clear pivot that ended up working out really well. So that is something that I was excited about.

[Nick Loper]

It was an opportunity that became visible

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

once I was in motion.

[Nick Loper]

Had I never, you know, built this silly looking wine site, never would have

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

come across that opportunity. And it's true. It's come up over and over again from so many guests. The business that they start with is often not the business that they end up doing, but it's what, it's what got the ball rolling. We have a line in our house, my wife and I, where we say the weather in Turkey and where it came from was we had this upcoming trip to Istanbul and I'm looking ahead at the 10 day forecast and I'm like, oh shoot, it looks like it's going to rain while we're there. And she's like, whatever. It's like, we're not canceling the trip, right?

[Nick Loper]

It's, it's the weather in the weather

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

in Turkey, you know, it's a call to control the controllables, right?

[Nick Loper]

I could bring a rain jacket, but

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

I'm probably not going to cancel this trip, right? There's a line where, you know, you,

[Nick Loper]

you can't stop the waves, but you

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

can learn how to surf.

[Nick Loper]

It is a call to control the

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

elements of your business that you have control over and doing your best to

[Nick Loper]

weather the storms that come your way,

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

but recognizing that sometimes stuff just happens, right? And I have told the story before

[Nick Loper]

of literally my first day of self

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

employment after I gave my notice at work and turned in the keys to my company car. That's the day that Google decides to shut down my advertising account that the

[Nick Loper]

shoe business relied on.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

And it was like, okay, you go through the seven stages of anger and denial and ultimately acceptance and saying, well, what can I control here? Okay, I can control the landing pages, I can make some improvements based on what I think they might want to see. And ultimately it was definitely a stressful summer and kind of an expensive one in redeveloping a lot of the site. But ultimately they came back and said,

[Nick Loper]

okay, you know, we made an error,

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

you know, you're good to go. The ad account is back on. So it was an example of, okay, their decision is somewhat outside of my control, but I can control the user experience on the site and hopefully get it back into their good graces and be able to run that business for several more years. The next idea I want to present is this one called sharpen your pencil. And this comes from my dad when he'd be helping me with homework as a kid and he'd come over to the kitchen table and be like, look at this thing go.

[Nick Loper]

Sharpen your pencil.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

You can't do good work with a dull pencil. It's like, come on, just help me out with this math problem, Whatever, it doesn't matter. He's like, no, no, no. The tools you work with, with matter. And this is kind of the call to get a little bit better every day. It is looking for that 1% improvement, that slight optimization, that better, smarter, faster way to get things done. My virtual assistant, back in the day, we were, you know, writing out hundreds of text ads for these specific models of shoes. And she's like, whoa, have you heard of this little text expander app as a like, no, what's that? She's like, oh, let me show you.

[Nick Loper]

It accelerates things.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

Oh, and by the way, you know,

[Nick Loper]

there, these campaigns are kind of slow

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

to load because there's so many products in there.

[Nick Loper]

What if you kept four different tabs

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

open and, you know, now we can

[Nick Loper]

do this four times. It's like just these little micro improvements

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

are the equivalent of sharpening the pencil in my case. And try and think of other examples when it comes to the podcast, like little workflow improvements and right now building out kind of mini AI agents to

[Nick Loper]

do certain parts of the process for me. It's like even after 13 years of doing it, it's like there's still little

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

performance improvements, there's still little ways to sharpen the pencil every day. And I think you'll find the same in your business. A lot of entrepreneurs have the tendency to reinvest almost everything back into their business. And you see this a lot in E commerce because we have something that hits well, I need more inventory and I've got all my capital tied up in inventory and growth, sometimes for years.

[Nick Loper]

And so the idea that I want

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

to present is it's okay, take some chips off the table. Nobody ever went broke taking a profit and in my case, trying to reinvest

[Nick Loper]

some of the earnings back into the business, of course, because it's probably the

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

best ROI that you're ever going to see. If you can get something that's compounding 20, 30, 50% a year, like, you'd be crazy not to feed that machine a little bit. But at the same time, like trying to take some chips off the table and invest that into, you know, dividend paying stocks, into real estate, into something where if I can get paid once, I want to make that dollar work for me over and over again, sometimes it's going to be a very small percentage, but like socking a little bit of that away and trying to stack up some truly passive cash flow in that way. So that's my call to take some chips off the table. When it makes sense. And for me, maybe the example was selling the virtual assistant assistant site in 2020. It was like my time to work on it had kind of diminished. And it's like, okay, you know, I don't want to see it start to decline, so be a good time to hand off the reins to the next owner, to the next buyer. One question that comes up quite a bit is, how do you know when it's time to throw in the towel on a side hustle?

[Nick Loper]

And the answer for me has historically

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

been, when you come to dread the work, the last thing that you need is a second job that you hate that you really don't look forward to doing.

[Nick Loper]

And there's a fine line between kind of like pushing through the tough parts

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

and, okay, not every day is going

[Nick Loper]

to be rainbows and unicorns.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

But.

[Nick Loper]

But if you start to see a

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

pattern where you're like, this is not enjoyable. I'm not seeing the results that I want. You don't need this in your life, right?

[Nick Loper]

There's business ideas are like buses.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

There's always another one coming. So I think it's totally fine. There's the.

[Nick Loper]

Well, quitters never win, and winners never quit. It's like, winners quit all the time, right? If something is not serving you, it's

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

totally okay to quit that or even put it on pause, put it on the back burner, and try and figure out the next stage.

[Nick Loper]

So just want to put that out there as permission to not kind of work yourself.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

Paint yourself into a corner where, you know, I'm. Now I'm trapped doing this thing where it's like, no, you're.

[Nick Loper]

You're still in the driver's seat, and

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

if it's not serving you, it's okay. Put a pause to throw in the towel or to say, okay, I'm going to pivot. I'm going to try something else. One of my most important side hustle habits is this practice.

[Nick Loper]

Kind of.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

Kind of a nightly. I done this exercise. What did I get done today? Did I do work that mattered?

[Nick Loper]

Give yourself permission to celebrate some wins and some progress along the way, because

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

entrepreneurship can be a lonely road, right? And nobody else knows what you're going through.

[Nick Loper]

And so you kind of want to

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

take stock of, okay, I checked this off my list. I got this off my list.

[Nick Loper]

This was important to me.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

I got this done. And being really intentional, both on that progress side what did I do? And also, for me, really important, is to say, what am I going to do tomorrow? That way I know exactly what to do? Because yesterday Nick told me so in what order? Even before I start reacting to somebody else's agenda, like what am I going to do proactively for me and my business before kind of going into reactive mode.

[Nick Loper]

So tracking your progress and then taking

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

a moment for gratitude. This is all stuff that I have baked into my three question journal. It's what did I get done today? What am I grateful for and what are my top priorities for tomorrow?

[Nick Loper]

What am I going to do tomorrow

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

to win the next day? And John Lee Dumas gave the line, you win tomorrow, today. And it was kind of the same idea of doing a little bit bit of advanced planning because the to do list is never done right. And that's kind of one of my struggles as an entrepreneur.

[Nick Loper]

There's always more ideas than there are

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

hours in the day. But trying to be intentional, okay, this is what I think I get done. These are my most important things to go ahead. So be intentional about celebrating your wins and making some progress.

[Nick Loper]

And finally, I think the goal is

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

to find a side hustle where you can have a goal in mind. Of course, I think it's important to set the GPS where you want to go, but then also appreciate the day to day journey. The journey really is the destination. You know, finding work that you enjoy. We've heard that the secret to happiness is meaningful work plus meaningful relationships plus a sense of progress. A journey toward mastery. Like getting better at your craft. Like Joe Salsihai from Stacking Benjamin's. He always gives me this line of, you know, I'm embarrassed by the work I did a year ago and a year from now I hope to be embarrassed by the work that I did today. But he's on that journey that every day I get to do work that I love. And yes, there's a destination in mind. This is what I want in terms of financial goals for my family or you know, an end goal for my customers. But along the way I'm going to enjoy the moment. I'm going to take a moment to look around and appreciate that this is pretty cool that we get to do this kind of work. So really appreciate you tuning in. If you find any value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend.

[Nick Loper]

So find fire off that text message.

[Side Hustle Show Guest/Co-host]

We'll let them know about it. Thanks so much for watching and make sure to subscribe for more money making ideas. Cheers.